Mosque of the Late Mohamed Abdulkhaliq Gargash

Dabbagh Architects, headed by architect and founder, Sumaya Dabbagh, saw the completion of the Mosque of the Late Mohamed Abdulkhaliq Gargash in Dubai (United Arab Emirates) in August. This is a contemporary place of worship that is quietly masterful in its use of form, materiality and natural light, controlled to evoke a sense of calm and spiritual connection. 
The mosque, in honour of businessman Mohamed Abdulkhaliq Gargash, who died in 2016, is one of the first in the United Arab Emirates to be designed by a woman.Sumaya is one of the few Saudi female of her generation, among a handful of female architects who have opened their own offices in the Gulf region. Well known for constructing buildings that are culturally relevant, and in dialogue with their surroundings, she emphasises the intangible in architecture, striving to create meaning and poetic sense to form a connection between the user of each work.
The architect’s previous projects include the Mleiha Archaeological Centre (2016), a curved sandstone structure rising from the desert in the small UNESCO World Heritage town of Mleiha. The project was even awarded an Architecture MasterPrize (2020), among other accolades, and was nominated for the Aga Khan Awards (2018).

«This is a contemporary place of worship that is quietly masterful»

As a gift to the community and in honour of the late patriarch, the Gargash family wanted to create a contemporary mosque for the community of Al Quoz, the industrial heart of Dubai. Committed to supporting local industries, and in accordance with the practice’s sustainable approach to design, Dabbagh Architects created the building with materials such as Omani stone, concrete, aluminium and ceramics from the United Arab Emirates.«Creating a place of worship was a very particular design challenge. Prayer is a devotional act. It requires the worshipper to be fully present. With all the distractions in our modern, busy lives, it can be a challenge to calm the mind down and find an inner serenity to allow full immersion in prayer», Sumaya noted. Through the design, a series of spaces have been created to allow the believer to make the transition from the hectic outside world and prepare for an inner experience.
Natural light has been used as a tool to enhance the feeling of spirituality, the connection between the earthly and the divine, and to mark the devotee’s journey through the site. Scale also plays a role in creating this sense of sacredness. Beginning at the outside entrance, perforated shading creates an environment of light that leads believers to the ablution area, where physical cleansing is inducive to cleansing of the mind and preparation for prayer. The path continues into a lobby, where further detachment from the material world occurs through the act of taking off your shoes.

Once inside the prayer room, the visitor moves to an even more enclosed space, where you can do some Qur’anic reading before prayer. All this time, the intensity of light changes from one space to the next to enhance the preparation process, so that when you finally enter the main hall, one is ready for prayer.
«Muslim prayer is performed throughout the day at prescribed times: at dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset and evening. This discipline creates a human connection with the natural rhythm of day and night. The experience created by the mosque’s design seeks to enhance this connection through the controlled introduction of natural lighting», explains Sumaya. This is done in three ways: vertically, through the perforated dome to increase the spiritual connection with the heavens (the rays of light from the narrow openings on the sides create a sense of illumination of the divine); indirectly, behind the Mihrab, allowing the focal point in the prayer room to be highlighted facing the direction of prayer; and finally, through the interplay of light from a series of small openings in the façade that follow the same decorative patterns as the interior.
The reinterpreted Islamic patterns and triangulated geometry are harmonised throughout the interior as intersecting lines on the walls, carpets and lighting.

«A surata (verse from the Qur’an) wraps around the outside of the prayer room to create a metaphorical protective band»